Twenty-eight new, tenure-track faculty have occupied the classrooms, lecture halls, and laboratories of Boston College this academic year. Some arrived as senior faculty, having achieved significant careers elsewhere. These include two who filled endowed chairs—the Boisi Professorship in Education and Public Policy and the Honorable David S. Nelson Professorial Chair, which was created to foster scholarship on matters of race and diversity. Others, mostly the assistant professors, look forward to a six-year effort to earn tenure. Together they reflect a “great” recruiting year, but “not an unusually great” year, as BC has sustained a trajectory of good years, says the University’s Vice Provost for Faculties, Patricia DeLeeuw.

Of the 28, just over half (16) are women, a proportion in line with recent past hiring, says DeLeeuw. Boston College’s full-time regular faculty is currently 38 percent women; broken out by rank, women account for 28 percent of full professors, 37 percent of associate professors, and 48 percent of assistant professors.

The recent additions to the BC community whose visages grace these pages bring Boston College’s full-time, tenure-track faculty across the six schools to 679, a net gain of 26 positions over the preceeding five years. With a new strategic plan in development, the University will likely further increase the faculty over the next 10 years, says DeLeeuw, by a number that is “still a source of some conversation.”

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